El Salvador: Background and U.S. Relations

Congress has long maintained interest in El Salvador, a small Central American country that has had a large percentage of its population living in the United States since the countrys civil conflict 1980-1992. During the 1980s, the U.S. government spent billions of dollars supporting the Salvadoran governments efforts against an insurgency led by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front FMLN. Three decades later, the United States is working with the countrys second democratically elected FMLN Administration.